Miscellaneous Monday: What Makes a Hero?

Welcome to the first Misc. Monday of 2012! Last week I asked everyone what they thought the most important trait for a hero is. The most common response was, surprisingly, "Intelligence". We like our men smart!

So, lacking any TV or movies or other junk to talk about, I'm dedicating today's post to all of the great book heroes that I've discovered (so far). I read female centered books, so I think I tend to focus on the female characters in my reviews. This post is the guys' time to shine. So, without further ado, my Top Seven Heroes (in no particular order).

Ethan Quinn from Rising Tides by Nora Roberts. If I'm going to talk about awesome heroes, I obviously have to include the Quinn men (see my snippet reviews for more information). I chose Ethan in particular, though, because he's such a quiet, gentle soul. One would be tempted to call him a Beta male, but I don't think the term quite fits. He's dependable, loving, and great daddy material. He's got a dark, tear-jerker of a past. For those of you who love nice guys in contemporaries, Ethan is for you.

Curran from the Kate Daniel's books by Ilona Andrews. Curran makes it onto the list for being a genuinely scary dude who I would not want to piss off...who is still genuinely likeable. If you like alpha males, he's it. This is as alpha-like as they get. He's a tough, smart, loyal bad-ass who's carried Kate out of more than one burning building--and who wouldn't want a guy to do that for her? He's the leader of the Pack--basically all of the shape-shifters--which equals a ton of power. What really won me over to him, though, was when he tells Kate that he would ditch the Pack and let them all go hang if she asked him to. What a prince!

Vishous from the Black Dagger Brotherhood books by J.R. Ward. Smart guys really are super sexy. Combine that with his tragic past and present day issues and you get a hero who's a little messed up, a little scary, but still incredibly likeable. I liked seeing his emotional journey, in which he struggles to reconcile what he feels in his heart with what his brain tells him is "best".

Mark Turner from Courtney Milan's Turner series. He makes it onto the list for having an impeccable moral code and being such a decent man. That makes him sound terribly boring, but in fact he's one of the more well developed characters I've seen in historical romance. Once I learned that his stance on male chastity was brought on my finding a starving baby in an alley, I was won over to his side 100%.

Jamie Fraiser from the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. He earns his spot on my list for being a survivor (of, like, every terrible thing that can happen to a person), in addition to more heroic traits than I can reasonably expect to name. He's a big, tough, handsome Scott with more layers than an onion. Clair carries this series for me, but it wouldn't be half as memorable without Jamie by her side.

Jericho Barrons from the Fever series by Karen Marie Moning. The thing I like most about Barrons is that he's incredibly mysterious. He's something of an antihero. I was never sure, even right up to the end of the series, whether I could really classify him as a "good guy". Yet, I was always sure that he loved Mac, at least in some distant corner of his heart.

Bones from the Night Huntress series by Jeaniene Frost. While Mark made it onto the list for being moral and good, Bones earns his spot by being pretty naughty. He's a bounty hunter and former prostitute, who now uses his talents to help and...please his wife. All of that aside, he gets points for putting up with Cat who, let's be honest, puts him through the emotional wringer a time or two.

So, those are my most memorable heroes. Who makes your list? What makes him fantastic?

This week, as so many of us are starting our 2012 reading challenges, I'm asking how many books you usually read in a year. Don't forget to vote, on the right side of your screen. Happy reading!

Dragonflies Stuck In My Head

I believe that, for anyone who reads a lot, their are certain books that just implant themselves in your mind and heart. Books that, once read are never forgotten. Books that you find yourself thinking about and relating to years after you initially read them. For me, Diana Gabaldon's Outlander books (particularly the first trilogy) are like that. There is something so touching, so expansive, and so purely entertaining about Clair and Jamie Fraser's story that I simply can't get it out of my mind.

After finishing Outlander I immediately wrote a review detailing how surprised I was that I enjoyed such a weighty piece of historical fiction. It isn't just the romance, although for me that's certainly part of it. It's the adventure, violence, history, turmoil, and attention to detail that make it stand out. I said all of this, to anyone who would listen. But I never reviewed Dragonfly in Amber, though I certainly enjoyed it almost as much. The reason for this is simple. Dragonfly in Amber makes me sad. I think that when I finished it the first time I was way too emotional to write about it objectively.

For this reread, I actually decided to listen to the audible edition . There's nothing like being read to, and since I am familiar with the story, it's alright for me to multitask a bit--cooking, doing laundry, shelving books at work--without fear of missing anything.

OBLIGATORY SPOILER WARNING: The book starts out with Clair, twenty odd years after the end of Outlander, in the 1960s in Scotland with her daughter Brianna. Clair's purpose in traveling to Scotland is twofold: she wants to explain to Brianna the truth about her father and tell the story of her long ago adventures in time travel, and she wants to find out what happened to the men she knew who fought at Culloden in 1745. My initial thought was, why tell the story this way? Why would Gabaldon show her hand so early, letting her readers know right off the bat that 1) Clair and Jamie were unable to prevent the Scottish rising, as was their stated intent at the end of Outlander, and 2) Clair ultimately ends up leaving Jamie and returning to her own time, thus obliterating whatever happily ever after they appeared to have at the end of Outlander. Why tell the end of the story first? I guess it's because in this case suspense is not the point. Tragedy is the point.

Clair tells her story to Brianna and Roger (a historian), beginning with a journey to France. There Jamie attempts to befriend Charles Stuart and prevent him from starting the Scottish rising. Although we already know the basic outcome of this, the story remains entertaining because of the strong voice that Claire presents as a narrator. Her varied and interesting life is at times amusing, and of course at other times heart breaking. Eventually we follow Claire and Jamie back to Scotland, to war, and to their goodbye.

The characters are the soul of the story, and much could be said about them. I was already attached to Claire and Jamie, and certainly they go through a lot in this book. They develop as individuals and as a couple. But I was particularly intrigued by Brianna, due to the strange circumstances of her origins and her upbringing. The focus of this book isn't on her, only delivering hints of her personality, but I enjoyed her presence all the same. Roger's presence in the story is equally interesting.

The biggest drawback of these books, for me at least, it the length. You have to be willing to invest a lot of time, and the plot doesn't exactly move at lightning speed. Yet there isn't too much wasted space. The details, even those that seem irrelevant, add to the richness of the story. As much as I enjoy all of that detail though, it took me three weeks to get through this book the first time, and only slightly less time to get through it again.

I had forgotten that the book ends on something of a cliffhanger, though a positive one. One of the things I loved about Outlander was that it ended with a sense of cautious hope for the future, rather than a sugary sweet happily ever after. This book does much the same thing, delivering a solid ending with a strong hint of more to come.

This book will always stand out to me as the book that made me cry the most. While I tend to get weepy at books, I rarely launch into full sobbing, but I did with this book. Any book that can draw you in that deeply is an undeniable success. 5 stars.